School children would never know the joy of a snow day, the S.S. Minnow would never have been lost, and Dorothy would have never journeyed to Oz.

Such is the atmospherically vanilla world portrayed by conventional climate models. In conventional climate model simulations, precipitation only falls in moderate showers, leaving climate scientists to complain that the models rain too weakly, too often. And according to climate scientists, a virtual world with no stormy weather isn’t just boring – it’s unrealistic. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the synthesis of climate change research that is considered the final word on the state of the science, says that their data should not be used to project global precipitation pattern changes...

An injection of gel could help a singer like Julie Andrews regain her full voice. The material restores floppiness to vocal cords stiffened by scars.

Singers are not the only ones who can experience vocal cord damage. About 6 per cent of the US population has a vocal disorder, mostly from stiff vocal cords. Singing, smoking or injury can cause scarring, and age stiffens our vocal cords of even the quiet and sensible. Rigid cords cannot vibrate as effectively to make the different tones in our voices...

There are only 13 "Archimidean solids" - a family of symmetrical, 3D polyhedra attributed to the Greek mathematician. Now chemists have made a molecule-scale version of one of these special structures, known as the truncated octahedron (see picture, right).

The tiny, hollow structure acts as a cage, capable of encapsulating a surprising variety of ions and molecules without falling apart. It also aids the creation of substances that won't otherwise form...

These particles, called antineutrinos, suggest that about half of Earth's heat comes from the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium – and give clues to the location of geological stashes of these elements...

Yosemite National Park's lush flora has run on solar energy for millions of years. Now, the park's human inhabitants are following the vegetative vibes and using the sun's rays to run their facilities.

On Wednesday, the park will dedicate its 672-kilowatt solar panel system in El Portal just outside the park's boundaries. The 8-foot-by-12-foot solar panels are squeezed onto almost every available space on the roofs and sides of buildings, as well as the roofs of carports and parking garages at Yosemite's El Portal Administrative Complex...

NASA’s six-wheeled Mars rover Curiosity now has a destination on the Red Planet: Gale Crater, an ancient, 150-kilometer-wide depression with a large mountain in the middle. The car-sized robot will spend at least two years wheeling around the rocky basin, collecting information about martian history and looking for signs of habitable environments.

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